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Is it a CPU bottleneck?

TNGL

TNGL

TNGL

Soldato
Joined
2 Jul 2010
Posts
3,098
Specs:
Q6600 (I believe) @ 2.4Ghz
4GB OCZ DDR2 @ 800Mhz
An old mATX Gigabyte motherboard (can't give you the exact product, until I've had a look on the motherboard for it's name).
EVGA GTX 480 1.5GB
OCZ 700W

Recently my brother's upgraded his GPU and PSU, however the graphics card is really under performing, with usage only hitting around 85% (if you're pushing the graphics card, with high in-game settings) and only 65% with lower settings. I'm pretty sure the CPU is bottlenecking it, as I read that when you lower the settings, more work is given to the CPU. To further this, in BF3 he could play on Ultra and get 30 - 40fps, high and get 45fps, medium, 45fps etc...

If you think the CPU (and the ram, motherboard etc) is bottlenecking it, what's the cheapest CPU, ram and motherboard to buy that would be able to remove this bottleneck? He doesn't mind going second hand, so the member's market is an option should anything suitably cheap appears.
 
Martini1991 said:
Q6600 at stock is definitely a bottleneck.
Cheapest i5 1155 and board with DDR3 RAM you can get would remove it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. Could you also confirm that those GPU usage figures and behaviour corresponds with a CPU bottleneck? Or is that unrelated?
 
So, this, this and this would remove the bottleneck? I have to be sure, as it wouldn't be my money I'd be spending, it'd be his.

You seem quite knowledgeable, is there any other alternative you could think of to save money? E.g. sell the GTX 480 and downgrade to a card that won't be bottlenecked by the CPU, will run at 100% and can run BF3 on high settings.
 
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The ivybridge I5 would be a better option it will give about 10% more performance over the sandy bridge equivalent.

+1 for bacons spec


There ia also a thing called lucid virtu which will enhance the graphics by using the onboard graphics to boost the graphics card giving better frame rates.

Potentially by up to 50% . Google it
 
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I'd go for 8GB RAM can be had for around 40.
I'd change it to the i5 3570k to overclock for a little extra (Can do 4GHZ on stock cooler)
But yeah it should/will remove the bottleneck.
 
The older i5 CPU with that motherboard would probably remove any CPU bottleneck made by a Q6600, but may need a bit of overclocking to see significant results.
 
spixelspixel said:
I only see 20-30 percent gpu usage with an overclocked 2500k on some games so don't base a purchase just on that.
Click to expand...
Overclocked i5 2500K among the best on what's currently available for, but it would still take a long time I think for CPU to become fastest enough to NOT bottleneck high-end card for some CPU demanding games that use only 1 to 2 cores.
 
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